Still here.

Lent my camera to a friend over the weekend, and just it got it back, loaded with excellent pictures. I love it when that happens. The ones above are ones I took-- we went to the State Fair last week. I ate a funnel cake. We watched dog obedience and agility trials. It was awesome.

Below, pictures from the third and final anti-fracking Big Splash event, held in the Fingerlakes this past Sunday. These events have been going strong all summer, bringing incredible numbers of people, and talented bands, together for the celebrated purpose of protecting our drinking water.

The above photos are by my friend Ty. It was an amazing day. I drank beer, and ate catfish, and was silly. I slept on the ground, too, but that was the plan all along. It was, altogether, a fine way to end Labor Day weekend.

In between and all around, I've been trying to knock things off my before-winter punch list. It's nothing exciting, I promise, but it excites me. I love turning chaos into organization, and so I've been reveling in things like: installing the former upstairs kitchen cabinets in the garage, and filling them with tools to be used as a workbench; curbing our hand-me-down couch which had basically served as Diesel's bed for six years (IT STANK); and started turning a bunch of scrap 2 x 4s into a frame for the chicken coop I'm going to (eventually) build in a corner of the garage. We'll see if I get to that before the snow flies.

Yesterday evening, while it was cool and damp and generally unpleasant outside, I puttered around with Kate Wolf and Gillian Welch on Pandora, tidying and arranging and dusting and generally focusing on the inside of our house for the first time since springtime. I am grateful for fall. Fall will stir the domestic, cozy-ing instinct, make me thrill at hanging things on walls and decree a return to painting in the Great Room. I am ready.

Are you?

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